OmniGuide Closes $15 M Funding Round

Photonics.comJan 2004
CAMBRIDGE, Mass., Jan. 13 -- OmniGuide Communications Inc., a company developing hollow-core cylindrical photonic bandgap optical fibers, has announced the closing of a $15 million Series C financing round. New investors are Westbury Partners, which led the round, and Gainesborough Investments. First-round investors Ray Stata, OmniGuide's acting CEO and chairman, and Mukesh Chatter, and second-round investors Alliance Technology Ventures and 3i US, also participated in this round. To date, OmniGuide has raised $29.5 million.

OmniGuide is introducing its first commercial product, hollow-core optical fibers to flexibly guide CO2 laser power for medical and industrial applications. Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT) faculty members Yoel Fink, John Joannopoulos and Edwin Thomas, and Uri Kolodny, OmniGuide's vice president of marketing and business development, founded OmniGuide in May 2000 to commercialize patented research on omnidirectional reflectors. OmniGuide has an exclusive license from MIT on omnidirectional reflectors.

"While applications to guide laser power for medical, industrial and military markets will generate early revenue growth," Stata said, "OmniGuide continues to focus on the development of hollow-core fibers for telecommunications, where it expects to displace current silica fiber technology for the transmission of optical signals."

Strata said a search is underway for a full-time CEO. James W. Schubauer II, president of Westbury Partners, and Mikko Suonenlahti, a director with 3i US, will join OmniGuide's board of directors. In addition to Stata, board members are Yoel Fink, OmniGuide's co-founder' Anil Khatod, former chief marketing officer and president of Nortel's Global Internet Solutions; and Mike Slawson, a partner with Alliance Technology Ventures.

OmniGuide's technical advisory board members are John Joannopoulos, a physics professor at MIT; Edwin L. Thomas, an MIT materials science and engineering professor; R. Rox Anderson, a dermatology professor at Harvard University and director of Massachusetts General Hospital's Laser Center; Erich Ippen, a professor of physics and electrical engineering at MIT; and James Harrington, a professor of ceramic and materials engineering at Rutgers University and a former president of The International Society for Optical Engineering (SPIE).